Black Hat vs White Hat SEO

What are the most ethical… and not as ethical… SEO practices? 

SEO has evolved greatly over the years. As time has gone on, best SEO tactics have been “optimized,” and now there is differentiation between not-so-ethical and ethical practices. These are referred to as “Black Hat SEO,” which is not ethical, and “White Hat SEO,” which is more ethical. Not only is it more ethical to use White Hat SEO, but it is also more effective for your website. At the end of the day, SEO is about helping people. 

Black Hat SEO

Black Hat SEO is outdated, unethical SEO tactics. They used to be standard practice, but they were aggressive, manipulative and abused. 

5 Black Hat tactics include:

1. Cloaking: Showing the search engine and the human users two different things. 
2. Doorways: Poor quality pages that redirect the human user to another site. 
3. Expired Domain Use: Buying a domain that has expired and repurposing it. Often this is for a nefarious activity. 
4. Hacked Content: when content on a good website is injected with content without the website owner’s consent. 
5. Hidden Text: hiding characters or links in background-colored font or behind photos. The search engine can see this, but the human user cannot.

White Hat SEO

White Hat SEO is updated, more ethical ways of SEO that honor both the human and the search engine. 

5 White Hat SEO tactics include:

1. Keyword research: identifying best, long-tail keywords that will reach the target audience. 
2. Link baiting with high quality content to gain links from authoritative voices in the industry. 
3. On-page optimization: ensuring to utilize proper site anatomy, such as using H1, meta tags, and alt tags properly.
4. Content: creating rich content that will benefit the user with 3-5 keywords for the search engine. 
5. User friendliness: fast loading times, good design, etc. 

Conclusion

Ultimately, SEO is about helping the user and abiding by search engine standards. Studying Google’s documentation on best practices can be useful, too. Avoiding Black Hat and using White Hat practices is not only more ethical, but will be rewarded by the search engine.